NCW Libraries

"It all started when journalist Jillian Lauren asked LAPD Homicide Detective Mitzi Roberts about which case Roberts was most proud of closing. "Samuel Little," Roberts answered. The now 79-year-old Little had murdered approximately 90 women over six decades and repeatedly got away with the murders due to lack of evidence (or jurisdiction); Roberts finally brought him to justice by tying him to the murders of three Los Angeles women. Surprised she...

"True crime, as an entertainment genre, has always prioritized clear narrative arcs: victims wronged, police detectives in pursuit, suspects apprehended, justice delivered. But what stories have been ignored? In Evidence of Things Seen, fourteen of the most innovative crime writers working today cast a light on the cases that give crucial insight into our society. This anthology pulls back the curtain on how crime itself is a by-product of America's...

"A novel about a journalist in pursuit of a story about a child who survived a cult mass suicide, which may not be all that it appeared to be, told in Janice Hallett's signature original and innovative style of emails, messages, news clips, and screenplay excerpts"-- "Everyone knows the story of the Alperton Angels: the cult who brainwashed a teenage girl into believing her baby was the Antichrist. When the girl came to her senses and called the...

"'My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.' Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman...

"Best friends Daryl Barber and James Boucher were responsible, and their parents trusted them to spend Spring Break at Daytona Beach unchaperoned. When the boys missed their agreed-upon daily check-ins, their parents were disappointed. When they failed to come home on their planned return date, their parents were terrified. They could not have known that their innocent sons would encounter two violent men on the Florida coast. They could not have...

"What happens when a girl name Autumn Avery Willow has no friends. Is abused by her father, because she looks like her mom who died in a car accident when she was 14. Then her father kicks her out the house. She just so happens to run into a band she has never heard about before. One Direction. Right, when she thinks it can't get any worse it does. Or will one of the band mates fix her? Will she pull herself together? Will someone be there to pick...

"Like a nonfiction John Grisham thriller with echoes of Rainman, Just Mercy, and a captivating smalltown Southern setting, this is the fascinating true story--sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking--of an idealistic young lawyer determined to free an innocent neurodivergent man accused of murdering the wife no one knew he had. An inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice for readers of Midnight in the Garden of Good and...

"David Grann meets Susan Orlean in this page-turning true story of an underground operation into the mysterious world of alligator poaching and its larger than life Floridian characters To catch a Florida Man, you have to become one, and that's what Officer Jeff Babauta did. As his ponytailed, whiskey-soaked alter ego, he established Sunshine Alligator Farm. His goal? Infiltrate the shady world of illegal poachers in the Florida Everglades in order...

An agent in the world-renowned FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit who consulted on more than 850 homicide cases, crossing paths with some of the world's most infamous serial killers, and the real-life model for The Silence of the Lambs's Clarice Starling, shares her incredible story for the first time.

An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff--a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America.